


In these Grim Times

by ThatsMyJam (PaulAtreDeezNuts)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Meta, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 21:57:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15543018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaulAtreDeezNuts/pseuds/ThatsMyJam
Summary: Somebody raised the question: What if Sirius isn't a dog animangus - what if he actually is a Grim?





	In these Grim Times

**Author's Note:**

> There was a post on tumblr about "hey, given the events in his life is it possible that Sirius is actually a grim because people keep dying around him" and then there was some discussion of the origins of the Grim myth and then I made this pile of sad.

In the old days it was bad luck to start a graveyard without a guardian. And when all your kin are falling in the gales of winter, when you’ve lost a son to the sea and a wife to the plague you do all that you can to end that miserable, hurting, festering streak of black luck.

But you wouldn’t want your mum to be the guardian, to spend her rest helping everyone to pass through. She spent her life that way - a warm presence beside the hearth, the day’s darning in her aching hands, her stomach empty so yours could be full. Your mum in the churchyard, never still and always helping, always giving away more of herself, is more than you can bear.

How about your granddad? They still tell stories of him down the pub, about how on a snowy night when the village quaked with fear he stood alone, a tiny knife in his hand against the darkness. When the dim sun arose he and the bear were found still on the cold, white earth, frozen blood all around. Your granddad dies alone and cold and scared but no more children go missing that winter. He saved so many people with his sacrifice, you can’t ask his spirit for more.

Or your baby daughter? Born without breath in her little body, her tiny face serene, void of pain. She has nothing to give and you’ve given so much already in mourning her. You never knew her, you can’t let a little one so lost carry such a burden.

But on the edges of the woods there’s a starveling dog, a great black brute - tall as your shoulder but slat-sided and as hungry as the wind. He growls in the night when there are noises in the woods. He licks the small hands of children who toss him scraps.

He’s as good a dog as there ever was, but the graveyard needs a spirit and your heart is heavy with the thoughts of your mother, your granddad, your baby daughter. Anyone else would have the same stories - it would be Ted’s brother who gave his grain to a neighbor or Bess’s son who ran ten miles to get the doctor when the priest fell ill. And the dog knows his duty. He may wag his tail when his head is patted but he doesn’t sport that frisson of joy and beautiful stalking stride until he’s prowling against the darkness in the woods.

You feel ugly doing it, but the churchyard needs a spirit to call the sinners home.

*

Over time it gets easier. A tradition is built. Every few years a great shaggy black pup is born, long-legged and slat-sided. The pup is raised well, fed choice treats, loved by all, and when there’s a new graveyard the dog goes to do its duty.

It’s a short life. But it’s a life full of joy, full of love and gratitude and dear friends and a face raised to stare unblinking into the darkness, feral and dangerous joy dancing around strong jaws and sharp teeth.

And the villagers are safe. They’re less alone in the darkness.

**

When Sirius first felt the shift he heard a whisper deep inside his soul. A small, empty, hungry voice growled “yes” within him. Before he could know he knew the voice he was running through dew-damp clearings with his friend, howling a feral joy at the moon.

***

His friends teased him - he was a Black Dog, and wasn’t it funny coming from a family of Slytherins? He was just as scary as everyone made them out to be.

But that was for when they were laughing in the daylight.

In the darkness Moony held him as he wept in the dormitory, shredding another letter from his mother or sitting in the echoes of a howler excoriating him for being a blood traitor, for being scum.

Sirius sobbed and half-laughed. “Blood traitor, eh - I thought dogs were supposed to be loyal.”

“They are,” Moony whispered into his hair, “to masters who are kind, to people who love them.” And that night it was someone else who held the darkness at bay.

****

Lily held his hand as he wept on the couch of the cottage where she and James lived, but where Sirius was spending more and more time. She knew he didn’t really have anywhere else to go, she wouldn’t want him to be alone. It was going to be a hard winter, she wanted to give him what warmth she could.

“I know he’s gone, Lil,” Sirius ground out. She squeezed his hand tighter and his voice got smaller, like it was being pushed through a straw.

“He’s just a kid,” and Sirius failed to stifle a sob. “He’s been helping that bastard for years, he doesn’t care about me and never has, but in my head I keep seeing him smile when Kreacher lit the candles of his birthday cake.”

“Look, Padfoot,” she said, feeling her own throat tighten with the lie, “I’m sure he’s fine. In a couple years this will all be behind us and we’ll work on him together. He’ll come around. He used to think you hung the moon.”

But Sirius just shook his head and tried to still the shaking of his shoulders.

“No. I’m never going to see Reg again. He’s gone and I can’t say goodbye.”

She folded his head against her chest and shushed him. She hadn’t told James yet. She hadn’t told her mother. But maybe this was better. Maybe Sirius needed to be the first to know about the new little life inside her, to get past the death he could feel rolling in his soul.

*****

The darkness of his grief was threatening to overwhelm him and the only sound he could make was a painful growl each time he exhaled.

He saw Harry’s tiny head held so carefully in Hagrid’s ungainly hands. He saw the wreckage of the inside of the cottage - broken glass in the picture frames, scorch marks on the wallpaper. Blood on the carpet.

Inside of him he felt a mounting howl of rage and wrath and an utter rejection of this loss.

Sirius Black was a hound, and he was on the hunt for vermin.

******

It was a short life, he thought as he fell through the veil, but one full of joy and gratitude and love.

His heart wrenched as he saw Harry see his fall. His godson was haloed in the light of curses, carrying too much weight for his small frame. Moony held to him, kept him safe in the storm. Sirius hated to leave them, but knew they would care for each other. They’d heal each other’s wounds until he saw them again.

Sirius fell onto a strange grey shore. There’s a cold light around him and for a moment he’s lonely until something inside him shifts and stretches its legs. On the silver sand beside him there are the shapes of people, people who suddenly have faces, people who his soul has cried out for all these years and he’s awestruck to feel them near him, to find them just on this side of the veil, and more than anything to know why he was put on this world.

Arms enfold him, there are whispers and caresses and embraces that he’s longed for. But there’s great sadness and confusion as well. He looks to the faces of the people he’s loved - his brother, his friends, casualties of the war. The longer he looks the larger the sea of lost faces grows.

He raises his voice: “Follow me,” he says “I know the way home.”

And somehow he does.

*******

It seems an instant before he’s seeing Harry again. The boy has grown up some but it is too soon. He’s not meant to be here, though it tears at Sirius to know he must send him away.

He’s holding Moony’s hand, watching Harry watch Lily and Prongs. He is overflowing with pride for this hurt, exhausted young man who is so much a vision of his two friends.

Harry doesn’t belong here, but Sirius takes his friends and his godson and walks beside them.

It’s what he was meant to do. He walks with them and keeps them company though the darkness, a dangerous joy twitching at the corners of his smile.


End file.
